BUT: as South African epidemiologists have pointed out, it’ll only be a problem IF the mosquito that transmits it elsewhere, comes here – because our local A aegypti doesn’t have the same behaviour, and will vastly outnumber and possibly outcompete any import variety.

And it’s endemic in tropical Africa – meaning many people are immune already.

So scaremongering about Zika in Africa is possibly a little irresponsible – unless it’s being used as a stalking horse for an agenda for setting up continent-wide arbovirus surveillance, or spurring on efforts to set up an African CDC. Which I would heartily endorse.

The stuff about lack of reagents is spot-on: which is why we have a proposal in the works…